


Whom so ever you love, I shall love

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alec Lightwood Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parent Maryse Lightwood, Baking, Based on a Tumblr Post, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Domestic Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Family Feels, Jace Wayland Feels, M/M, Magnus Bane Being Magnus Bane, Multi, POV Jace Wayland, Parabatai Bond, Parabatai Feels, Past Abuse, Pining, Polyamory, Post-Episode: s02e03 Parabatai Lost, Pre-OT3, Supportive Jace Wayland, Sweet Magnus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 18:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9620960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Falling for Magnus Bane is a surprisingly easy thing to do.





	

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Started writing this after 2x04, so goes AU from there to a certain extent. Victor is also a bit less problematic here than he is in the show. (In other words, his behaviour towards Izzy in 2x05 is completely creepy and wrong and disturbing, and his character here may turn out having little relation to what his character is turning into on the show). Also, Jocelyn is still alive here. In that she is mentioned briefly and her death is not. Incorporates some elements of 2x07, cause apparently the show wasn’t about to be upstaged by my head canon (although I think they should all move into the loft tbh, but Jace is definitely where I would start, so there’s hope yet). Based on following tumblr post: http://gutteredstars.tumblr.com/post/155987404640/yes-magali-talk-to-me-about-jagnus-and-your  
> Full credit to gutteredstars for inspiring this, written and posted with permission for @gutteredstars on tumblr.

They are in the Ops centre when it happens. Nearly six months have passed since Victor Aldertree turned out to be almost as fair minded as he liked to think he was, or perhaps just as desperate as Valentine has made them all these days, and let Jace come home. 

Those were the words everyone used, everyone who would acknowledge his existence. Izzy said it best, rushing up to hug him only to hesitate just a tad, Jace being the one to bridge the gap, to gather his little sister into his arms and hold on like he was still drowning in the East river. Her whispered, “Welcome home Jace” brought as many tears to both their eyes as it should, but there was enough hesitation in the last word, enough of a “b” sound for Jace to guess what she wasn’t saying. 

Jace never blames Izzy for the line she drew between the Lightwood siblings and himself the day she made a deal with Victor Aldertree. It’s just that six months on, he still hasn’t quite figured out how to wipe that line away. 

Still, the general lack of greeting from most of the Institute’s population wasn’t that surprising. Jace was far more shocked by Aldertree sitting beside him at lunch, even if the man didn’t so much as say pass the salt on any of the habitual occasions the whole thing turned into, than he was by Raj spitting the word traitor in his face the first time he tried to go to bed in his own room.

The blackeye Raj was sporting the next morning was the first sign of that line he mentioned before weakening however, and Jace let himself smile for the first time in weeks. 

So no, coming “home” was never going to be all warm and fuzzy. Any more than it had been growing up there. And maybe that would be fine, except Jace puts his feet flat on an ice cold floor every morning, and for just a moment, finds himself wishing it would turn into a garish Turkish brocade rug. He is no more sure what to do with that than he is what to do with the ice that forms in his stomach every time Jocelyn attempts to smile at him in the corridors, every time someone mentions the word home and he can’t quite figure out if he should be thinking about cargo holds or hawks or cold floors or brocade rugs. None of which is helped by the fact he has, to his knowledge, never actually been barefoot in Magnus Bane’s apartment, let alone stood on the man’s brocade rugs long enough to find the feel of the carpet fibre comforting. 

Suffice it to say, Jace sometimes thinks drowning in that river would have been the easier route to take. 

Still, standing in the Ops center, Clary leaning casually beside him attempting to tell a really bad joke, Jace feels almost normal again. Let’s the natural “you’re not nearly as funny as you think you are little sis” roll off his tongue like water, like it is Izzy standing next to him and not Clary. 

And it isn’t until he feels Clary stiffen slightly, until a lull in the air appears as Alec and Izzy react to the words, that he realizes that he really did find what he just said normal. 

Jace has little to no interest in acquiring any more relatives at this point. He already has more than enough enemies for one lifetime thanks. And in six months, weak smiles in the corridors every third Sunday is about the best his mother has managed to come up with, and Jace is not so surprisingly okay with that. 

But somewhere along the way, he apparently found a way to call Clary Fray his little sister, and be completely okay with it. 

Jace is still trying to figure out if this revelation makes him more or less of the monster his father turned him into when thin arms wrap around his chest and squeeze, Clary’s red hair brushing his chin. 

“Thanks Jace.” It’s a whisper, it in no way mentions the word brother, but it’s a start. 

And just like that, Jace isn’t in love with his own sister anymore. 

88

Magnus Bane’s favourite breakfast food is apple pancakes. 

Jace finds this a bizarrely bland choice for a warlock who apparently literally bathes in glitter water-Jace has no other plausible explanation for how Magnus manages to get his skin accessories that perfect-but he is halfway through asking Simon to borrow a laptop because apparently that’s where mundanes find recipes these days and the only pancakes he’s ever actually had were somehow both burnt to a crisp and impossible to scrape off the ceiling in less than a dozen pieces each, he is halfway through his first google search-how to find apples in New York-before he stops to wonder how he knew what Magnus’ favourite breakfast food was. 

He still gets the apples, but uses them for target practice instead. Watching juice run down the training wall, arrows notched perfectly through each core, a bit sheepish that he’ll have to explain the fruity stickiness to Alec, and a bit more freaked out because channeling strength has been something they’ve done for years, but Alec has been trying to teach Jace archery almost as long as Jace has been avoiding looking at the sky in case he happens to spy a hawk and this is the first time his aim has been anywhere as good as Alec. 

Freaking out because the wall in front of him isn’t so much a testament to his sudden increase in archery skills, and more a eerily bizarre example of his new ability to channel Alec. 

The week before Alec jumped off the Manhattan bridge in pursuit of a demon and didn’t even have to roll when he hit the ground. A year ago that stunt would have broken his leg. 

And Jace knows Magnus Bane’s favourite breakfast food. Jace watches the juice drip. He only has one favourite food, and that has nothing to do with the sludgy mess that is spaghetti in Jace’s mouth, and a lot to do with who used to make it for him. 

Jace growls to himself quietly, and grabs as many apples as he can hold, arrows still attached. 

Alec complains about the stickiness for a month. Jace throws an apple core at his head. 

It’s the first time Jace has been back to Magnus’ place since Alec literally stopped breathing on his couch, and it is all Jace can do to keep his own breathing steady as he mounts the steps. He rubs his wrist unconsciously, juggling knocking with balancing the finger singeing box carefully draped in his cleanest hoodie. 

The door swings open with a crash, Magnus actually holding three balls of light in his spare hand, cat eyes slashing rapidly. Annoyance doesn’t quite cover it, the dripping “What do you want blondie?” searing the air with distinctly cold smoke. 

Jace only met one warlock as a child, if you can call it meeting. His father held a sword to the woman’s neck, her aqua skin rippling like water. Jace remembers her eyes the most, no pupils, pools of blue liquid brimming over and flowing down her face. It took him over a decade to realize that the look in her eyes, moments before the seraph blade separated her head from her neck, those pools fixed squarely on the bruises painted across Jace’s lips, was sympathy. 

Jace only met one Warlock as a child, and there wasn’t exactly time to notice if her magic was cool or not. If it scared him or inspired him. 

Staring at the blue fire licking around Magnus’ forearm, he can’t quite stop the “that is so cool man!” that slips out, followed by a wince that is half when did he start channeling Simon and half pain because these pancakes are way, way too hot. 

Magnus doesn’t appear to know what to do with Jace’s statement. Or maybe he just really likes the smell of apples. Jace didn’t google this part, so he nearly beams the other man in the face in his eagerness to shove the breakfast offering at him. In his defense, they are really hot. 

Magnus manages to look disdainful and hungry at the same time. “Is this your hoodie Blondie?!” Incredulity makes his glamour flicker again, and Jace sees his opening. “Cool cat eyes there man. You should flash those more often. Almost makes you look passably handsome.” 

He brushes by Magnus in mid splutter, jogging up the stairs and crashing into Alec on the couch, carefully not thinking about heartbeats, about cold stone and searing hot skin. 

Jace has watched Alec watch Magnus consume five pancakes with a soft smile on his face before he remembers his charred fingers, his bad arm twitching badly for a moment. The eyes that flick towards the movement are as yellow as they are black, and Jace allows himself a slight inward cheer through his wince. 

It isn’t until Magnus is covering his disappointment over the dwindling pancake supply by disparaging Jace’s choice of container-an arrow box, really Goldie?-that Jace pauses for a moment, and finally wonders why he cares what Magnus Bane’s favourite breakfast food is. 

Then a blue wreathed square of pancake dripping with whipping cream and strawberry syrup is shoved into his mouth, and suddenly, Jace has more than one favourite food. 

At this rate he may have to invest in an actual cookbook. 

88

Parabatai bonds are not an exact science. There have been roughly six such pairs in the last four decades according to Victor-call-me-a-clave-encyclopedia-Aldertree, so that is hardly surprising. 

Jace considers asking Luke about it, but the fact he A, is likely to get ripped apart if he sets foot in wolf country, or outside the Institute, or pretty much anywhere expect possibly Magnus’, and B, he would rather fillet himself alive than ask his father’s parabatai about the bond his somehow didn’t quite break Luke in half when it was severed. 

He carefully doesn’t think about what it might have done to his father, because that is a road that is so not worth going down. 

Jace will never quite be able to think of Valentine as a monster, but sharing the edges of a soul with two people instead of just one, warlocks, shadowhunters, or anything else they may be, will never be one of the reasons Jace thinks of himself as a monster for. 

Mostly because A, Alec, and B, thinking of warlocks as monsters is kind of impossible after the Ship. Plus the glitter thing. 

00

 

Maryse kicks Jace out a month after he returns from the City of Bones. He is still sweaty from a nightmare, his sleep top for once revealing the slight list in his gait, compensated for rather cleverly he’s always thought by the side zipped clothing mundane fashion so obligingly provides him with. The ache of Valentine’s blade arching towards the warlock’s neck, his son small enough and unnaturally fast enough to make it underneath the swing moments before it connects, only to be nearly sliced in half as the blow falls anyway. Jace doesn’t remember the next few hours too well, but in the years that follow, his father never ceases to drill into him how grateful he should be that Valentine is a good enough warrior to pull his blow before he hit his five year old’s spine. 

It takes nearly two decades and another warlock almost being decapitated to realize that Valentine is a good enough warrior that he could have checked the blow before it hit Jace at all. 

Or that he could just not have swung at all. 

Jace stands before Maryse, words like cancer and shame and not my son blurring together. He stands there, his reattached arm pulled protectively behind his back by a parade rest, his jaw locked, his eyes distant. 

Jace remembers being ten years old, laying in a Clave building in Idris, listening to Maryse and Robert argue about him. Remembers the frown in his adoptive mother’s eyes, and permanent crease between her eyebrows that he will one day recognize as the look she always regards her only daughter with. Remembers being shaken awake when is was still dark, led to a training room and told to “prove his worth,” remembers suddenly feeling at ease, at peace, because this he is familiar with. Valentine never told his son what would happen if he failed the “prove yourself” test he was given on each birthday. He made sure he never found out. Years later, Jace will look back at all this and suspect he did find out. His hawk had been a birthday present afterall. His father died three weeks after the hawk was killed. 

Still ten and standing before Maryse Lightwood, watching from the corner of his eye as her frown rapidly morphed into a pleased smirk as each weapon spun into the bull’s eyes with a distinct thonk, he remembers feeling nothing but a hollow relief to match his bottomless grief. He went home with the Lightwoods the next day. 

Jace has spent almost ten years working as hard as he can to keep passing Maryse’s tests. He is slightly surprised to find that the moment he finally fails, the moment Maryse holds out a stele like a dagger, pointedly aimed at his parabatai mark, the moment Jace’s aching arm slashes out and knocks the stele to the floor without making contact with her hand, the moment her mask finally slips completely, the snarled “get out of my sight” hanging in the air, he is slightly surprised to find there can be satisfaction in the terror of failure. 

Alec later points out that “get out of my sight” doesn’t necessarily mean leave completely. Magnus glares at him over the tin of shortbread he is attempting to coax Jace into dipping in his tea. Jace will merely sit quietly and let his bare toes sink into the rug beneath his feet. 

It feels as warm under his wiggling toes as he shouldn’t remember it being. 

00

It takes Jace nearly two weeks to make his way to Magnus’ in the first place. 

He tries Luke’s first. Or rather, he shares Simon’s canoe for a couple days before Maia’s growls turn into actual attempts to bite his fleshier parts. 

He spends three nights on a bench in central park. And two by the fountain. The hardest part about that was making it to patrol with just the right amount of water in his hair in order to look like he’d freshly showered rather than simply dunked himself in a convenient fountain. 

He hangs out on Magnus’ roof before he ever finds his way to his front door, leans casually against a chimney stack and listens with rune enhanced hearing to the sounds of rapidly heating up make out sessions. Up there, he doesn’t even have to hide his jealousy. 

Or his joy, because for the first time since they were ten and hitting a bullseye, Alec sounds truly happy. It’s kinda awesome on the roof actually, with the added advantage of being close enough to both his parabatai and whatever Magnus Bane is to him these days to enable him to monitor their heartbeats. Just to make sure they’re still there, still breathing, still okay. 

Jace sometimes wonders what left him more effed up, his childhood or his adulthood. The Clave or Valentine. In his defense, it’s not a great set of options. 

Plus the roof is really rather amazing. 

Except apparently those Mundane novelists got it wrong. Vampires don’t attract bats. Warlocks do. 

Jace is bitten four different times before he concedes defeat and leaves the roof to its original tenants. 

00

Jace falling in love with Alec Lightwood went something like this:

A traumatized little boy who missed his father threw a knife at a target because maybe this was another test, and maybe, just maybe, if he gets this one right, he’ll finally get to go home. 

Standing in that cold institute hall, wood panelling trying to look old, glass floors feeling nothing but cold, that boy has never felt more alone. 

Then suddenly, smiling at the dark haired boy two inches shorter and two years older than him, a ridiculously intricate bow for its size clutched in nervously twitching fingers, that little boy doesn’t feel alone anymore. 

And somehow he knows, even all those years before the word parabatai was even floated past their consciousness, he just knows that he’ll never be alone again. Not properly. 

It takes him a long, long time to realize that that right there, is the kind of love that lasts forever. 

Jace falling in love with Magnus Bane went somewhat differently:

A young man stands at an altar, resplendent in a white suit, his world not yet shattered by knowledge he would later give anything to wipe from his head, the iridescent tone of his suit not yet cruelly ironic to all present. He stands there, in that hall of faux-old wood and cold, echoy glass, and watches his parabatai kiss a man who actually seems to have bathed in red flecked glitter. 

He watches Alec kiss Magnus, and for the first time in his memory, feels nothing but happiness. 

Barely weeks later, and yet years afterwards somehow, that same young man stumbles into a richly decorated loft, barely able to put one swaying foot in front of another, his side tacky with blood and pain. He is still wet, feels like he will never be clean, never be warm again. 

He’s lost his shoes somewhere in the last clash with the wolves, he doesn’t remember where, it doesn’t matter, it just means that the floor feels all the colder. 

His toes hit the shaggy edges of a rug moments before his parabatai’s soulmate rises to meet him with eyes that for once, look eons old even through their mundane glamour. He isn’t sure where the surge of warmth comes from, but suddenly it isn’t only his feet that are suddenly infused with a strange glow of something he hasn’t felt since he was ten years old. 

He holds onto those glitter spattered fingers as long as he can, trying desperately not to just fall over then and there, because Alec, Alec, Alec. 

He only gets thirty seconds, a minute at most, doesn’t even get to breath in properly, if he even could at this point. 

Hands close around his arms, rough, uncaring, Alec a confused mass of panic and drowsiness behind him. 

Glamoured eyes flick to his for the merest stretch of a blink, something oblong and yellow and wild flashing before he is yanked away. 

His feet brush the edges of the rug in a drag, and for just a moment, Jace lets himself remember that what he is feeling, what this all reminds him of, is love. 

00

Jace shrugs his least favourite leather jacket closer against the cold, lets the ache of the probably infected bat bites give him the courage to look just cocky enough to look like none of this matters to him. 

It works long enough to barge obtusely into Magnus and Alec finally making moves on each other, but yay, more things to be jealous of. 

It lasts long enough for Jace to wonder why he ever thought it was a good idea to show up baked-good less, except oh right, Maryse has his cookbooks along with the entire contents of his room, meagre as they are. Apparently, you arrive with a duffle, you leave with said duffle and nothing else. 

It lasts long enough for him to suppress a wince at Alec’s slight hurt at the interruption, lasts long enough for the words to form on his lips, for the brash, the expected, the in character “You got a spare room?” Lasts long enough for his jaw to clench, his shoulders to square, and his eyes to lock with Magnus’ glamours. 

It lasts long enough for him to ask presumptuously for the one thing he’s been searching for all his life. The one thing that the two people in front of him have come to mean to him, the thing he has come to realize means, for him, the very essence of love. 

Lasts long enough for Jace Magnus-will-probaby-figure-out-an-awesome-last-name-for-eventually to find his way home.


End file.
